Seizing Destiny: The Army of the Potomac's "valley Forge" and the Civil War Winter That Saved the Union - Hardcover

Conner, Albert Z.; Mackowski, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1611211565 ISBN 13: 9781611211566

Verlag: SAVAS BEATIE, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

FINALIST, 2017, RICHARD HARWELL AWARD, GIVEN BY THE CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE OF ATLANTA"Depression. Desertion. Disease. The Army of the Potomac faced a trio of unrelenting enemies during the winter of 1863. Following the catastrophic defeat at the battle of Fredericksburg in December of 1862, the army settled into winter quarters—and despair settled into the army. Morale sank to its lowest level of the war while desertions reached an all-time high. Illness packed the hospitals. Political intrigues, careerist schemes, and harsh winter weather demoralized everyone. Even the army’s livestock suffered, with more than 1,000 horses and mules dying every week.Major General Joseph Hooker, a pugnacious tactician aptly nicknamed “Fighting Joe,” took command of the army. And then a remarkable thing happened: a man known for his hardscrabble battlefield tenacity showed an amazing brilliance for organization and leadership. With Chief of Staff Dan Butterfield working alongside him, Hooker literally rebuilt the army from the bottom up. In addition to instituting vital logistical, ordnance, and administrative reforms, he insisted on proper troop care and rigorous inspections and battle drills. Hooker doled out promotions and furloughs by merit, conducted large-scale raids, streamlined the army’s command and control, and fielded a new cavalry corps and military intelligence organization.Hooker’s war on poor discipline and harsh conditions revitalized a dying army and instilled individual and unit pride. During this 93-day resurgence, the Army of the Potomac reversed its fortunes and set itself on the path to ultimate victory. No other American citizen-army at war has engineered a more complete turnaround in the field. Hooker’s achievement represents nothing less than the greatest non-battle turning point since Valley Forge in the American Revolution—a linkage recognized by hundreds of contemporary soldiers and civilian participants. Modern historians, however, have either failed to notice or have made only a passing reference to that link.Seizing Destiny: The Army of the Potomac’s “Valley Forge” is the first in-depth examination of one of the war’s true crucial turning points, a time when the army nearly dissolved from its own despair even as the nation depended on that body of bayonets to defend the promises implied by the Emancipation Proclamation. Authors Albert Conner and Chris Mackowski ground their research in hundreds of primary sources and let the soldiers speak, from the lowest private to the highest general. The result is a rich and satisfying portrait of an overlooked success story that made Appomattox Court House in 1865 possible.Here, finally, is the full story of how the citizen-soldiers of the Army of the Potomac overcame adversity, seized their destiny, and saved the nation through leadership, perseverance, patriotism, and faith."

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Albert Z. Conner Jr., a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and Georgetown University, is a Vietnam combat veteran and career intelligence officer. He has worked as a military historian since 1995. He developed his unique knowledge and analytical skills by studying the armed forces of several nations (including our own). Al has published extensively on multiple aspects of military history. He is a former president of the Fredericksburg Civil War Roundtable and Stafford County Historical Society, advisory board member of the Adams ’71 Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis at VMI, and a volunteer with the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. He lives in Stafford, Virginia, the scene of this remarkable story.

Chris Mackowski, Ph.D., is the editor in chief and a co-founder of Emerging Civil War, and he’s the managing editor of the Emerging Civil War Series published by Savas Beatie. Chris is a writing professor in the Jandoli School of Communication at St. Bonaventure University, where he also serves as the associate dean for undergraduate programs, and is the historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge, a historic property on the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield.

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Seizing Destiny

The Army of the Potomac's "Valley Forge" and the Civil War Winter that Saved the Union

By Albert Z. Conner Jr.

Savas Beatie LLC

Copyright © 2016 Albert Z. Conner, Jr. and Chris Mackowski
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-61121-156-6

Contents

Acknowledgments and Introduction, 
Chapter One: The Bedraggled Army, 
Chapter Two: The Old Year has Closed, 
Chapter Three: Go Forward and Give Us Victories, 
Chapter Four: Suffering, 
Chapter Five: Great Advances, 
Chapter Six: Improving Spirits, Deep Beliefs, 
Chapter Seven: Longing for the Spring Campaign, 
Chapter Eight: The Finest Army on the Planet, 
Chapter Nine: The False Start, 
Chapter Ten: The End of the "Valley Forge", 
Chapter Eleven: After Chancellorsville, 
Epilogue, 
Postscript: Posterity and Commemoration, 
Appendix 1: After the Army of the Potomac's "Valley Forge", 
Appendix 2: The Union Women of "Valley Forge", 
Appendix 3: Order of Battle: Army of the Potomac, May 1-6, 1863, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

The Bedraggled Army

Dissatisfaction swept over the Army of the Potomac like a midwinter blizzard. Morale plummeted. Men grew bitter. Hope froze.

The chill was far worse than anything Rufus Dawes had seen back in Wisconsin, and it was only late December. The 24-year-old major of the 6th Wisconsin Infantry, born on the Fourth of July in 1838, had watched conditions worsen ever since the debacle in Fredericksburg earlier in the month. Major General Ambrose E. Burnside had led the army to its most lopsided defeat of the war thus far, and the ill winds began blustering shortly thereafter. The squall hit furiously, almost as soon as the army retreated across the Rappahannock River into Stafford County.

"The army seems to be overburdened with second rate men in high positions, from General Burnside down," Dawes wrote. "Common place and whisky are too much in power for the most hopeful future. This winter is, indeed, the Valley Forge of the war."

Dawes, whose great-grandfather rode with Paul Revere on the famous midnight ride in 1775, wasn't the only Union soldier to allude to the Revolution. "As something of the spirit of '76 still continues to course through your veins, and as the heroic deeds of our ancesters still bring tinges of patriotic pride to your cheeks, whenever recounted, I will beg the liberty of giving you a short chapter clipped from this present age," wrote Nathaniel Weede Brown of the 133rd Pennsylvania Infantry in a letter from "Camp near Fredericksburg." As a "War Democrat," Brown had conflicted feelings. "This rebellion," he wrote, "concocted in iniquity and carried on for no other purpose than for the abolition of slavery and the aggrandizement of partisan spite, has cancelled the lives of thousands, destroyed property to the amount of millions." To Brown, "the butchery and pillage" had just begun. He praised his comrades' bravery in "fighting in a doubtful cause — for no one can tell what we are really fighting for."

President Lincoln did what he could to bolster the army's flagging spirits. "Although you were not successful, the attempt was not an error, nor the failure other than an accident," he said, but his praise sounded faint. "The courage with which you, in an open field, maintained the contest against an entrenched foe, and the consummate skill and success with which you crossed and re-crossed the river, in face of the enemy, show that you possess all the qualities of a great army . ... Condoling with the mourners for the dead, and sympathizing with the severely wounded, I congratulate you that the number of both is comparatively so small." Small consolation it seemed.

Ironically, on a December 18th nearly 85 years earlier, Congress had offered praise to another bedraggled American army, calling for a national day of Thanksgiving. General George Washington, leading his ragamuffin band into Valley Forge, paused the army's march in recognition of the honor.

Now, in 1862, the Army of the Potomac headed into its own Valley Forge, although they had no way to know it. Quickly, though, it became a winter of discontent. Army morale plummeted precipitously in the days and weeks after Fredericksburg. Not even Christmas brightened spirits. "We are suffering very much with cold and hunger," wrote Lt. Albert P. Morrow of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry — known as Rush's Lancers — on December 25. "The roads are in such wretched condition that we can't transport supplies and we can't buy a single article in this miserable poverty-stricken country."

Across the North, things looked just as bleak albeit for different reasons. "[The American people] have borne, silently and grimly, imbecility, treachery, failure, privation, the loss of friends and means, almost every suffering which can afflict a brave people," editorialized the venerable Harper's Weekly. "But they cannot be expected to suffer that such massacres as this at Fredericksburg shall be repeated." Unseemly as it appeared, the Union was apparently losing.

"In fact the day that McClellan was removed from the command of this Army the death blow of our existence as the finest army that the World ever saw was struck," wrote Maj. Peter Keenan of the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry. "What was once, under that great leader, the 'Grand Army of the Potomac' is today little better that a demoralized and disorganized mass of men."

The army began to hemorrhage more than 200 deserters a day, which immediately sapped the army's strength and will. By month's end, the first 2,000 of at least 25,000 deserters had faded from the front. With Washington access tightly sealed at the Potomac River, most made it only as far as Alexandria, where they huddled around campfires with fellow "skedaddlers." Burnside began the unpleasant but necessary process of rounding them up. On December 24, he issued General Order No. 192. "In order to facilitate the return to duty of officers and men detained at the camp of convalescents, stragglers, &c., near Alexandria," Burnside ordered an assistant provost marshal general to "repair to Alexandria and take charge of all such officers and men in the various camps of that vicinity as are reported 'for duty in the field.'" Each corps sent an officer and armed troops to round up stragglers and ship them to Stafford's Aquia Landing, where the returnees were systematically re-clothed, re-equipped and re-armed. Pointedly, Burnside used Regular Army troops to police up volunteer deserters and stragglers.

Although Burnside's provost marshal force and infantry and cavalry patrols arrested men lacking passes, substantial numbers of men still slipped through. The main desertion path flowed through Aquia-Dumfries-Occoquan. Soldiers walked or caught rides with sutlers, civilians, or fellow soldiers, some of whom brazenly stole wagons. In a common ruse, deserters posed as "telegraph repair work details."

The wounded had a far easier desertion route through the numerous Washington general hospitals. Once sufficiently recovered, a wounded soldier — frequently aided unwittingly by good-hearted U. S. Sanitary or Christian Commission workers or citizens — easily escaped.

For the non-wounded, desertion from the army's sector was best achieved by crossing the Potomac River into southern Maryland. Boats hired by deserters were almost certainly operated by men engaged in covert activities. The Confederate Signal Corps and Secret Service's "Secret Line" operated throughout the war with impunity from Aquia and Potomac Creeks in...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: SAVAS BEATIE
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1611211565
• ISBN 13: 9781611211566
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 480
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar